Are You Too Alone in Your Work?

Kirsten Olson, Ed.D.

Old Sow Consulting

MCCPSE Charter School

Leadership Summit

November 19, 2009

Making safe space here

• Observe “double” confidentiality

• Expect welcome and extend welcome

• Bring as much of yourself as you can

• Practice listening to yourself and others

My leadership story

“Leadership can sometimes bring grief, a sense of being alone and in limbo, the experience

of being marginalized…”

-Dan Commish, Nebraska Educational Leadership Institute, 2004

Conditions of the work

• Presentism: responding in 30 second cycles• Extreme, public accountability pressures• Mission driven work• Young, inexperienced staffs• Isolation due to lack of connective tissue in our

movement

What you said…

• “There is no one to bitch to.”• “Put on your big girl pants.”• “Everything that happens, you

always see as a challenge. You can handle it.”

• “I started working with a coach. I was driving my wife crazy.”

Leadership means wounding

• The role of leader may not align with our other emotional needs

• Wounding is an inevitable part of leadership• Wound can either be a growth catalyst or lead to

further crisis

(Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski, The Wounded Leader, 2002)

Nature of the wound

• Some essential part of ourselves is misunderstood, misrepresented, maligned

• “My staff thinks I’m a Nazi. I’m a progressive educator who is in the work to help children.”

• “They say I’m wishy washy. I thought I was being open, listening to them.”

• We feel alone…

Positional authority comes with consequences

• Staff relate to you, but also your positional authority

• “There are mean princesses and kind princesses. The same is true of leaders.”

• “Because you have authority over others, you should not be surprised that your decisions and actions may be misperceived. At some point you will be seen as a mean princess.”

-Elizabeth Ann Hebert, The Boss of The Whole School (2006)

Hazards of isolation in leadership

“I found no characteristics of a good school more pervasive than a healthy principal teacher relationship. [It] has extraordinarily amplifying effect. It models what relationships should be.”

(Barth, 1990, p. 19)

What is your story?

• As a leader, when do you feel alone?

• Around what issues?

• What has helped you feel less isolated in the past?

Which bee are you?

Seeking critical feedback

• Greater awareness of self• Who am I?• Aligning that answer to the job

“Leaders owe it to themselves and their organizations to…seek honest and, if necessary,

painful feedback on their performance. Leaders who fail, without exception, have a distorted view of

themselves, as well as misplaced loyalty to underperforming team members.

I challenge you to write your personal ‘user's manual’ This is who I am and what I stand for.

-MarieAnn North, Navigant Consulting, 2007

Find friends outside of school

• Critical friends group

• Graduate school cohort

• Mentor

• Leadership network

• Online social network

Leadership style

• Structural: Analytical frames, Good during change/reorg. Can be seen as

technocratic, cold. • Human Resource: Empowerment of others, pushes decisions downward. May

be seen as weak in some organizations• Political: Clear on end result, use persuasion, negotiation, coercion. Can be

seen as manipulative.• Symbolic: Organization is a stage. Inspiring and great communicator, or

smoke and mirrors. -Bolman and Deal, Reframing Organizations (2003)

“The paradox of leadership is that you have to face many things by yourself, without feeling too alone.

Knowing that there are others out there who feel the same way--that has helped.”

“I started to prioritize me.”